This year leading up to our annual Best of Houston® issue, we're counting down our 100 favorite dishes in Houston. This list comprises our favorite dishes from the last year, dishes that are essential to Houston's cultural landscape and/or dishes that any visitor (or resident) should try at least once.

I don't think it's any secret that Underbelly is my favorite restaurant in Houston at the moment. I'm completely in love with the highly unique "Mutt City" cuisine (another John T. Edge-coined term I'm far more comfortable with than "New American Creole") that chef Chris Shepherd and his talented team are creating and re-creating every day and equally in love with the overall accessibility of it all.

Underbelly is not a fancy restaurant. You don't have to wear a tie and jacket and you don't have to spend an entire paycheck to eat well. You can drop in nearly any time of day or night -- the bar, which serves only beer and wine, is open until 2 a.m. every day of the week except Sunday and serves an assortment of the restaurant's most popular dishes -- and you can always feel at home in the big, open dining room that showcases the equally wide-open kitchen. There's a sense of comfort and community here that is unexpected in such a hyped-up, over-talked restaurant, but -- while it's easy to see where all the well-deserved hype comes from -- I've never quite gotten the feeling that any of this has gone to Shepherd's (or anyone else's) head.

Instead, Shepherd is content to keep turning out dishes that are reflective of his personality and of Houston itself: boisterous, warm, welcoming and highly diverse. Just as Houston takes all comers, so does Shepherd embrace all of our "native" cuisines in his cooking -- Vietnamese to Middle Eastern, Mexican to Korean, German to Thai. And his Korean braised goat and dumplings is, to me, the dish that's most reflective of this open-arms attitude.

Is it a spicy Korean twist on old-fashioned, Southern-style chicken and dumplings? Sort of. Is it a nod to the tender cabrito found in old-school Mexican joints like El Hidalguense? Sort of. Is it a spin on the ruddy, sesame-studded Korean goat stew found at places like Bon Ga? Sort of. Is it all of these and more? Yes -- and that's the point.

But even if you don't care about the backgrounds and influences that went into creating the braised goat and dumplings (and you shouldn't have to in order to enjoy a dish), you'll care about the tingle that sparks across your lips and tongue like Black Cats as you take your first few bites of the shredded goat in deep red gojuchang sauce. Once that tingling sensation settles down into a low hum, you'll start noticing the rich, dusky flavor of the goat and the sweet, nutty pops of sesame seeds that are scattered across the top of the dish.

And when you get to the "dumplings," prepare for something that's quite unlike traditional Korean mandu and more like thick, tube-shaped gnocchi that's been pan-fried until slightly crisp at the ends. Get through that initial crunch and the dumplings have a complex texture that's both enjoyably chewy and slightly tough. Complex and thought-provoking textures are as appreciated in Asian cuisines as the flavor of the food itself, and to see this so well translated into an American dish makes me grin every time I eat it -- just as I can't stop smiling over every dish at Underbelly, a restaurant which has captured the Houston culinary zeitgest of the moment in the most charming and disarming of ways.